What’s New @ HHSL

What’s New @ HHSL

What’s New @ HHSL

Scholarly communication refers to “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use (Association of College and Research Libraries ).”

Scholarly communication relies in part on the ability of research libraries to purchase published works. The marketplace for scholarly publishing has developed in ways that challenge libraries’ ability to acquire the works needed by their users. Commercialization of publishing in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors has led to egregious price increases and unacceptable terms and conditions of use for some key research resources needed by the scholarly community.

How can Tufts University Libraries help?

The Tufts University Libraries are here to help you navigate through the publishing landscape and learn about copyright, fair use, and open access publishing.

Some ways Scholarly Communications @Tufts can help you:

Learn about managing your copyrights, and use the Author’s Amendment when you negotiate with publishers.

Consider using a less restrictive Creative Commons license.

Deposit your research in the Tufts Digital Repository, so that it can be openly accessed.

Consider putting your course in Tufts OpenCourseWare, and construct it carefully, so that you have the necessary permissions to do so.

Keep up with developments in the open access movement by regularly reading:

Open Access News – daily blog following the latest open access developments supported by the Open Society Institute and SPARC

Create Change – advocacy and education campaign cosponsored with the Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries to engage the academic community in reclaiming scholarly communication.

“But does it really work?” In our sound-bite saturated news media, it’s difficult to discern which health studies demonstrate effectiveness and which studies do not. How do we know when medical news is evidence worth paying attention to – or – when it is just ‘print noise’?

PubMed Health is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that was designed to help consumers and clinicians answer the question, “what works?” PubMed Health “specializes in reviews of clinical effectiveness research, with easy-to-read summaries for consumers as well as full technical reports.” It provides information on how to assess the research results as well as how to read health news.

One of the most valuable features of PubMed Health is “Behind the Headlines,” a joint project of the National Health Service and the U.S. National Library of Medicine. “Behind the Headlines” evaluates current medical news for accuracy and also describes how medical news stories come to acquire their “spin”.

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